Toshiba America’s consumer and small business direct sales portal Toshiba Direct is sending bulk email to an email address that last had a real user in 2007. Either Toshiba ignores bounces, or they are spamming non-opted-in email addresses. The ESP is Responsys.
U.S.-based hardware store Home Depot is sending bulk email to a long-closed email address. The ESP is ExactTarget.
The Military Industrial Buyer’s Guide, a portal for military and government purchasers, is sending bulk email to a long-closed role address. This role address never sent any email, and never received email except to contact the former domain owner about issues with the company web site. There is absolutely NO way that this address ever requested this or any other bulk email. Either Military Industrial Buyer’s Guide accepts unverified subscriptions and somebody typoed an email address and domain, or Military Industrial Buyer’s Guide purchased a list. The ESP is SendGrid.
A few weeks ago I blogged about a spamtrap hit by PrintCountry, an online printer ink and printing supplies seller. PrintCountry is still sending bulk email to the same long-closed email address, and is now hitting an additional email address that as far as I know has never existed at all. The email states that both email addresses was added to the system a short time ago. This is not possible; neither email address has been live since 2006, so there was nobody who could have subscribed that email address to any list in the past few weeks.
Veterans for a Strong America, a conservative U.S. political organization that campaigns for a strong national defense, is mailing an email address that has not been live since well before the 2008 presidential election. The organization appears to be using a bulk email software package that we normally associate with one of the large ESPs, but it is mailing from its own IPs at Denver, Colorado-based ForTrust, LLC. The domain veteransforastrongamerica.org is registered with GoDaddy’s Domains by Proxy, a Whois Privacy service.
Readers may notice that certain spam report blogs of mine are now appearing with the prefix (Resolved Issue): instead of the spamming company name. If you check inside these blogs, they have a notice at the top indicating that the issue is resolved, and a tag that also says “Resolved”. The blogs are still there, and still contain the same information. All the comments are preserved as well. The only changes are to the title, an additional paragraph at top, and an additional tag.
SalsaLabs, the ESP side of liberal U.S. political activist group Wired for Change, is mailing several email addresses that have not been live for many years, soliciting their attendance at a fundraising webinar (web-based seminar). It appears that SalsaLabs ignored bounces to email to their own list. However, you’d think that SalsaLabs would realize that none of these email addresses had responded to any emails in several years, since significantly before the last U.S. presidential campaign.
Sprint Nextel is mailing an email address that was closed in 2008, and after its timeout period was re-enabled in 2010 as a spamtrap. The ESP is Acxiom Digital. This looks like spam, but it isn’t. This is why.
Fido Friendly Magazine, a magazine for people who travel with their dogs, is mailing an email address that has not been live for many years. The message says that the email address “recently registered” for offers. This is not true for any reasonable definition of the word “recently”; this email address has not been active since the mid-2000s. Either Fido Friendly is accepting unconfirmed web subscriptions and somebody typoed the email address and domain, or Fido Friendly purchased a list. The ESP is YesMail.
Perfumaniacos.com is mailing an email address that was closed in 2008, via ESP Emailvision. (: I mistakenly identified the ESP for this email as SendGrid. It is not; it is Emailvision. Thanks for the correction, Paul!) The web site for this sender has a poor rating in the Web-O-Trust reputation service, with messages indicating that it has suffered security breaches and been the source of spam.